Feasible region method based integrated heat and electricity dispatch considering building thermal inertia

Integrated heat and electricity dispatch is crucial to exploit synergistic benefits from integrated energy systems. However, this requires information from both electricity systems and district heating systems (DHSs), which are managed by an electricity control center (ECC) and district heating control centers (DHCCs), respectively. For reasons pertaining to privacy, communication, dimension, and compatibility, it is not practical for DHCCs to send detailed models to the ECC. Therefore, a new feasible region method is proposed for formulation of new DHS models, which exploit the flexibility of DHSs with consideration of building thermal inertia. A greedy method is developed to solve the new modified feasible region models by calculating a series of linear programming problems efficiently. Then the new models are sent to the ECC to be used in central dispatch considering DHS operation constraints, i.e. integrated heat and electricity dispatch. The modified models are similar to conventional power plants and storages, and are thus compatible with current dispatch programs. Case studies verify the effectiveness of the method. Although some conservativeness exists, the total cost and wind energy curtailment are both decreased compared to conventional decoupled dispatch. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.